


Monday, Monday

by Anonymous



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Groundhog Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-16
Updated: 2010-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-07 07:39:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Donna and the Doctor try to endure one rather terrible, never-ending Valentine's Day.  (Or: Groundhog Day, Doctor & Donna style.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monday, Monday

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a Doctor/Donna Valentine's Day ficathon.

1.

The ninth day comes and goes. Donna watches the sun set through the window. Twilight in London, Monday, February 14, in the year 2107, looks exactly the same as it did the previous nine days.

"It's hopeless, isn't it?" Donna says. "We're never getting out of here."

"'Course we are!" the Doctor says. "Just give me another day or two. I'll get this to work. Three days at the most." He smiles cheerily. "Maybe a week."

* * *

2.

By the twenty-first Monday, the Doctor's smile has been transformed into something that looks a lot more like a scowl. Donna has stopped asking, since every time she does it seems to end in the Doctor explaining every, single, boring science detail behind what's happening. God, it's not that she doesn't _get_ it - bubble of time, stuck, no TARDIS, repeating the same day over and over... she's seen Groundhog Day.

Which is rather disturbing when she thinks about it.

"Is there something..." she gestures vaguely in the air, "we're supposed to... _do_?"

The Doctor looks up from the weird thing he's been rebuilding everyday out of forks and tiny hotel soap bars and frowns. "I'm working as hard as I can, Donna."

"No," Donna says. "I don't mean that. Just... you don't think it's the kind of time-field-thing that won't stop until we..."

"What?"

"Do... something?"

"Like what?"

"Do I have to spell it out for you?" she growls. "We are stuck in a _honeymoon suite_ on bloody _Valentine's Day_! Is the time bubble going to keep going until we..."

"...?"

"..._dance_?"

The Doctor stares at her, mouth ajar, for a few seconds before shaking his head with a jerk. "No. No. Ha! No. Doesn't work like that. No. Definitely not. Even if I don't get this to work, the spatiotemporal recurrence field will collapse on its own in time. And until then, there's nothing we can do." He gives her a grin that's almost _cheeky_. "Interesting idea, but no."

"It wasn't MY idea," Donna says and crosses her arms.

The Doctor stops smiling and nods seriously. "Of course not."

"It's just how it is in films."

"Films, yes. Got it."

"_Not_ my idea!"

* * *

3.

After the forty-second Valentine's Day in a row, things start getting a bit... odd.

The Doctor has run out of ideas, and there's really nothing to do but wait for the time field to collapse on its own. Which can apparently take anything from a second to _years_. Meanwhile, her nightmares are becoming increasingly heart-shaped; haunted by roses and tiny, stuffed toys that just want to be hugged.

"Do you have to breathe so loudly?" she snaps.

Yes, things are getting a bit tense. No one has ever accused Donna Noble of patience, and the Doctor is used to having all of time and space at his fingertips.

A tousled head of hair appears from under the covers next to her. "There's nothing wrong with the way I breathe!"

"It's loud!"

"Well, you... snore!"

"I do _not_ snore!" Donna says and kicks him as best she can, lying down.

"No. Of course not," the Doctor says, narrowing his eyes and adding in a lower tone of voice: "only when you breathe."

And that's when things start getting _really_ weird.

* * *

4.

"It doesn't count," she says afterwards.

"Nah", he agrees and pulls the covers up a bit further over his bare shoulders. "Just... relieving the tension."

"Exactly." Donna nods vigorously. "Consider it relieved."

"We won't remember it anyway," he says, and oh yes, that's the only part of this nightmare she's happy about; once the time bubble collapses, according to the Doctor's theory, time will reset itself and they won't remember a thing beyond their first February 14, which they spent shopping for shoes and presents for Wilf's birthday.

"Thank God," Donna says and stares intently at the roof. "Otherwise I'd have to scrub out my brain. With soap. Or lye."

They lapse into an awkward silence, as Donna tries to figure out where the hell her knickers landed.

* * *

5.

They celebrate the fiftieth Monday by staying in. Curled up on the couch, they've watched the same bad soaps on TV they've already seen more than once. Funny how it's been over a hundred years and nothing much has changed in that department.

Donna leans her head down on the Doctor's shoulder. "I miss the TARDIS," she says. It probably sounds rather whiny, but she thinks it's definitely in her right to be a bit whiny when she's had to suffer through fifty bloody Mondays in a row.

The Doctor makes a humming sound, and she realizes it must be even worse for him. He has that weird connection to the ship, the one that always makes Donna feel like she's intruding on something private if she walks in when he's doing repairs under the console (it's not so much the tinkering, but the way he _talks_ to the ship using a voice softer than he ever does with anyone else).

"You know what the best thing about spatiotemporal recurrence fields is?" he says, like he's really been giving it a lot of thought.

"What?" She glances up at his face. He leans back and plays with his fingers on her sleeve.

"The best thing about spatiotemporal recurrence fields is you never have to get your clothes washed or buy more milk."

Donna snorts. "It's not like you ever do any of those things anyway."

And then she has the best idea in 50 days.

* * *

6.

"You know," the Doctor says, trying to focus his eyes and failing completely. "Time Lords are _impervious_" - he takes his time to pronounce it very clearly - "to the effects of alcohol."

"Right," Donna says and raises an eyebrow. "You keep telling yourself that, Sunshine. Best thing about being stuck in a time bubble? No hang-overs."

"No consequences to anything," the Doctor says and empties another tiny bottle of Finnish vodka. "Not that Time Lords get hang-overs."

"No consequences," Donna agrees, ignoring the second part of his sentence. It's not like she's going to get the opportunity to prove him wrong anyway.

She puts her own tiny bottle down so she can cuddle up to the Doctor on the sofa. "If we don't remember any of this later, how come we remember now, when no one else does?" she asks as she lets her hand cover his chest, feeling one of his hearts beat under it.

"Weeeell, a bit hard to tell," the Doctor says and scrunches his face up in concentration. "We're bouncing back and forth in the recurrence field right now. Most likely it's the traces of vortex radiation in our cells that's letting us remember while we're still in the field. To everyone else it's just... déjà vu, and what are you doing?"

"Undressing you."

"Oh. Alright then."

* * *

7.

The temperature is at a steady 5 C. The sky remains overcast all day, with a slight drizzle between 7.32 and 11.10 am, and heavier rain between 2.05 and 4.57 pm. In other words, the exact same weather it's been for 73 long Mondays. At least she always knows what to wear.

"You better not be finding any trouble you 'absolutely must do something about', Time Boy," Donna says and grabs the Doctor's hand, dragging him away from the commotion on the street.

The Doctor does at least have the decency to look a bit guilty. "If I were to stumble onto anything, by accident--"

"No. I am not going to spend every day fixing the same problem over and over again. Don't even _think_ about it. Now let's go home before it starts raining again. We've got seventeen minutes."

It takes her a couple of minutes to notice he's still holding her hand. It's nothing they haven't done a thousand times before; there's no reason for it to make her feel anything at all out of the ordinary (no, those were absolutely not happy, little, _treacherous_ butterflies), and above all, there's absolutely no reason for him to grin like an idiot about it.

"You soppy fool," she says and lets go of his hand to shove at him. "If you even think about buying anything heart-shaped I'll make sure they never find your body."

* * *

8.

After awhile, she loses count of the days. It doesn't seem that important anymore. Everything floats together into a blur of repetition; all that matters is this - the way the lights from outside from patterns on his skin, his soft sighs as she moves slowly over him. His hands trail up her back, following the path of her spine as he sits up. His hot breath tickles against her neck.

"I'm gonna miss you, Donna" he whispers in her ear, and she wishes he'd kept quiet. There he goes, ruining a perfectly good, fun shag by making her think of the future.

She opens her mouth to tell him that maybe it won't be so different, back on the TARDIS - maybe it'll happen again, this thing, whatever it is, but nothing comes out.

"Make your mouth useful," she says instead and pulls him closer.

* * *

9.

February 15th is gloriously sunny and cold. Donna smiles brightly against the Doctor. "I could be mistaken," she says as they walk into the TARDIS. "But is this the first time we've landed somewhere and nothing the least bit out of the ordinary happened?"

"What do you mean, nothing out of the ordinary? You got to stay in a luxury suite in a fancy hotel and shop for shoes and nothing interesting happened at all. That's very unusual."

Donna snorts. "My point exactly."

"Most places have at least _something_ interesting going on," the Doctor sulks. "But not here. I _looked_."

"I bet you did," she says and throws a last look outside. It had been an almost _suspiciously_ uneventful couple of days...

Or, far more likely, the Doctor's thrill seeking habits are rubbing off on her. Which is a rather terrifying thought. Donna shakes her head and closes the doors behind her as the Doctor gets the TARDIS started.

* * *

10.

"Not. A. Word."

The Doctor can't seem to stop grinning. "I was just going to compliment your technique."

"Hilarious."

"I'm just saying it was a very impressive splash. Have you done much competitive diving before?"

"I'm laughing so much it _hurts_," Donna says and slaps him on the shoulder.

The Doctor rubs his arm furtively. "We should probably hurry back to the TARDIS before, well..." he glances pointedly at her.

Donna wraps what's left of her rapidly disintegrating clothes around her. It just figures that the puddle of mud she'd managed to slip into _had_ to contain some kind of alien, cloth-eating enzyme. It's like the first law of time travel - things are always worse than they seem. There's no such thing as innocent mud.

"Oh!" the Doctor says and looks delighted. "Did you know you have a birthmark shaped like Australia on your hip?"

"Oi! You're one to talk, Mr Mole-Between-Your-Shoulder-Blades!" she retorts quickly.

The Doctor's mouth drops open, and then she realizes what she just said.

"Wait, how did I know that?" she says and when their eyes meet it's almost as if she, not quite, but sort of _remembers_ something...

She abruptly looks away from him and stares stiffly straight ahead. Space is weird. And some things are probably better left undisturbed.

"Let's go to a Monday," the Doctor says. "I'm really in the mood for a Monday."


End file.
